July 2008 Archives

Neurologist Oliver Sacks resembles my dad.

Then on Tuesday, The A.V. Club published the following photo of cartoonist Jules Feiffer and I thought, holy cats, Jules Feiffer resembles my dad, too!

When they film the biopic of my dad’s life (Forever Young), I nominate Sacks and/or Feiffer as my dad’s stunt double for the bicycle-accident scene.

Home-style Cuban cooking on the Upper West Side! I had a Cuban sandwich at Café con Leche for dinner, at least, because I was craving pork and pickles. Also, maduros, which are fried sweet plantains. I haven’t been eating very healthily lately, have I?

Café con Leche

• 424 Amsterdam Ave. (between W. 80th and W. 81st Streets)
• (212) 595-7000
• Meal 38 of 52: cream of black bean soup ($5.95), maduros ($2.95) and a Cuban sandwich ($5.95).

There’s a mouse in my house and he had the gall and impressive dexterity to lick the peanut butter from the trap I’d set without springing it. So I brought in the big guns and borrowed Paddington the Cat tonight from his mistress, Kelly. We’ll see if he can get the job done. . .with extreme prejudice.

Postscript: Although I have located no mouse carcass, I believe Paddington scared away the mouse. At least for a while. Paddy definitely knew there was a mouse afoot; I caught him at times crouching and staring intently into the crevice between my kitchen counter and wall where I’d imagined a mouse might hide.

Someone forwarded me an email today in which the author mistakenly referred to herself as a grain protein.

I am a gluten for punishment.

Naturally, this amuses me.

Purchasing Sloane Closley’s essay collection I Was Told There’d Be Cake at the Strand, the best bookstore in the world, the cashier absent-mindedly handed me the flyer I’ve scanned above, which reports the store’s Financial District offshoot, the Strand Annex, is closing on August 31st. According to a blurb in The Real Deal about a month ago, it’s because “construction in the area has decreased foot traffic around the store, lowering profits,” although the flyer notes it’s because the store lost its lease. Whichever reason, it’s a bummer; I hate to see any bookstore bite it, especially the kin of one of my favorites.

Should a Mexican restaurant be considered any more authentic if actual Hispanic people comprise the majority of its patrons? I don’t know but Mexico Lindo, which has been around since 1972, had authentic-seeming food and featured a lot of Hispanic people eating there. The cheesiness is kept to a minimum although they did allow a Mariachi guy with a guitar to strum in the background. Great margaritas and tasty vegetarian fajitas, featuring peppers, onions, mushrooms, tomatoes, broccoli, zucchini and scallions.

México Lindo

• 459 Second Ave. (at 26th Street)
• (212) 679-3665
• Meal 37 of 52: vegetarian fajitas ($13.95) and a few margaritas.

After a dry patch with the ol’ backing tracks and wireless mikes, I introduced a selection of my Manhattan-based friends to a trio of my Brooklyn-based friends for two hours of private-room karaoke at Japas 55. Our room was small and the singing was loud so it was impossible to intermingle or converse freely, but I think the group had a ton of fun. Andie, crafty lass, keyed in “Hello” by Lionel Richie without me noticing and sprung it on me for a solo with but a few seconds to get into a Richie mood: how did she know my secret weapon?

This is the view I see almost every weekday, walking to my apartment down West 192nd Street from the 190th Street station of the A train. I’ve always enjoyed the “stacks” of apartment buildings rising like a mountain above Broadway.

Here’s the interesting bit: a commenter for Isabel Lugo’s recent blog entry on population densities in the U.S. provided a link to a satellite view of the country’s “densest block” And guess what? That view features the same set of buildings that I see daily.

By the way, the “block” the post’s author and commenters refer to doesn’t have anything to do with a city block: it’s a “census block group,” the government’s definition for which makes me woozy.

Suffice to say, those clusters of buildings I see each day comprise part of the most densely populated area in the U.S. That’s cool.

At work today, I was talking on the phone with a guy in Los Angeles who used to live in New York. When he heard I live in Manhattan, he said what he missed most was the city’s number and variety of restaurants.

“That’s funny,” I said, “because I have this resolution called the 52 Meals Project....” From there, he rattled off his top-three favorite restaurants, and at the top of the list was The Spotted Pig.

I can see why: it’s a friendly, neighborhoody place, though small so it gets crowded in there, with a weird mix of English-Italian fare and a bunch of pigs—ceramic banks, jigsaw-cut wooden boards, metal signs—decorating the place. Lots of natural light, herbs and houseplants growing illustrated red-and-yellow steel cans that previously held Italian tomatoes. I had a deviled egg, a bowl of haddock chowder, garnished with homemade crisp soup crackers shaped to resemble miniature pillows, and two pints of a red British ale I later learned was called Speckled Hen, all while completing the crossword in this week’s New York.

The Spotted Pig

• 314 W. 11th St. (at Greenwich Street)
• (212) 620-0393
• Meal 36 of 52: two beers ($8/pint), a deviled egg ($3) and a bowl of chowder ($14).

This place wasn’t bad. Tortelloni are like tortellini on steroids; if they talked, they’d sound like Rocky.

Chelsea Trattoria

• 108 Eighth Ave. (between West 15th and West 16th Streets)
• (212) 924-7786
• Meal 35 of 52: a glass of red wine ($9), prosciutto with melon ($10), tortelloni ($15), an espresso ($3) and tiramisu ($7).

When I.T. Guy switched out my eye-cancer-causing CRT at work with a brand new 19-inch Dell flat screen monitor, I was amused to note a new benefit: the extended area in which to clutter my desktop with stray files. In my photo, note the barren area on the right third of my desktop. Not for long will it stay that way!

My neighborhood 99-cent store changes its window displays infrequently.

I tried making my first pie from scratch most of this afternoon and I botched it. It was a learning experience and I don’t regret it. I called my Mom twice for advice: my Dough Hotline. I felt I was taxing her because she clearly thought she was better at showing how to make pie then telling me, but I found if I asked her 100 questions I could coax the technique out of her.

First dough batch: Dry and crumbly; could not resuscitate.
Problem: I didn’t use enough shortening and the shortening I did use I didn’t cut-in well enough (nor did I cut it in small enough; it was big ol’ chunks instead of the pea-sized bits it’s supposed to be in my mom’s recipe).

Second dough batch: Seemingly excellent consistency at first. However....
Problem: I didn’t roll it out enough before giving up on it. It kept falling apart whenever I picked it up. Also it was super-sticky—I had put the dough-ball in the freezer but only for 15 minutes; I should have left it in there longer, especially given the high humidity in my un-air-conditioned apartment.

At this point, I had to give up because I’d run out of shortening and patience. I ended up tossing six cups of Gala and Granny Smith apple slices, mixed with sugar, flour, cinnamon and nutmeg. I definitely could have done something with it—bought a ready-made crust, obviously. Mom suggested additional ideas, such as making a sort of apple crisp or applesauce out of it. But I was in an Ultra Mega-Stubborn mood and dumped everything. My garbage smelled great for the remainder of the day.

I will try again. Because although I can be stubborn, I am also tenacious. Next time I will prepare the crust before the filling, while ensuring I have 16 pounds of Crisco and flour on hand.

Beth and I headed out to the Siren Music Festival this afternoon a bit late, around 3:30, 4:00 p.m. or so, so we missed Film School, which she’d wanted to see. But I enjoyed catching the end of the Beach House set, and The Helio Sequence, which has the happiest drummer I’ve ever seen. They played a cover of the Beatles’ “Tomorrow Never Knows,” which was crazy. I bowed to Beth’s wishes to see Broken Social Scene vs. Stephen Malkmus. I don’t know anything about BSS or its songs but it was a raucous show; all that brass and all those guitars, plus Siren’s infamously loud and horrible speakers, made for an overwhelming sound. None of the band’s ladies made it (there was a potshot about how some of them were over on Sesame Street) but the band had a random acquaintance named Audrey come onstage to sing one song; she was wearing a summer dress made of lotteria fabric which was totally boss. We were standing front and center, about three rows back from the VIP barricade, and there was nearly a literal mosh pit going on towards the end. Hot, sweaty good times, although later I discovered some raw-meat red spots of sunburn on my right forearm where I’d accidentally rubbed-off my SPF 2000 sunscreen. Another sting was to see a “bubba,” as Beth called him, wearing a charming racist T-shirt.

Did you notice a slight disturbance in the force tonight? It may have been just a china-rattling quiver, depending on your proximity to Manhattan, but it was definitely there. I can explain: it was Vincent’s birthday celebration. The wackos were surely out, and not just in our group. Walking from the 6 train to the east side, I caught up with Andie and Eric who were speaking about local real estate with a woman I’d never seen before and whom I assumed they knew. After she walked away, just before we entered the Pinetree Lodge, Andie and Eric revealed that the woman had been a complete stranger who had noticed them contemplating a nice leaded glass window on an apartment building door and that she’d sidled up to them and started pitching the neighborhood and various buildings exactly as if she was a broker. But she wasn’t; she was just a New Yorker.

Anyway, Pinetree is nice. As Megan says, “it’s nearby, cheap and you can drink outside.” I would add that they have numerous animal heads mounted to their walls, including a moose you can accidentally hit your head on, as well as Big Buck Hunter, which almost but not quite makes up for the fact that their jukebox selection sucks.

I spend the majority of my waking life sitting in a cubicle. Also, I can’t think of anything more exciting to write about. So here is my cubicle credo.

• I believe cubicles are not meant for establishing one’s identity. Any figurines, dolls, stuffed animals and other toys perched on or in a cubicle should be stored at home in the cubicle dweller’s basement, near the remains of his unhappy, attention-starved childhood.
• I believe a spartan desktop indicates someone with too much time on his hands or a position in upper management.
• I believe in a pile system, one that extends from credenza to floor, draping every horizontal surface like luxuriant Spanish moss.
• I believe that if a tidy cubicle can serve its occupant as a metaphor for a well-prioritized and disciplined mind, I am allowed to claim that my pile system and strewn paperwork represent productive precipitation from my frequent “brainstorms.”
• I believe in displaying a cherished family photo in my cubicle. It suggests I’m affable and it’s a good conversation-starter when visitors or new employees stop by. It’s fun for me to talk about, too, because it doesn’t depict anyone from my family. It’s a wallet-sized studio portrait of grinning, Kindergarten-aged triplets that a coworker gave me a while back for no apparent reason. (They’re his sister’s kids and he talks about them constantly.) So I pinned the photo to my cubicle wall and when people ask about it, I make stuff up. “Jonathan, there in the middle? He died from the grippe soon after that photo was taken,” I’ll say. “But I hadn’t really bonded with him yet as an uncle, so it wasn’t a terrible loss. At least from my perspective.”
• I believe in displaying few other cubicle decorations. Mine include:
  • a Trogdor the Burninator sticker I found on a sidewalk in Cobble Hill.
  • a variety of those oval stickers from bananas, spanning Del Monte, Anita, Chiquita, Bonita and Turbana.
  • a printout of that “I Ain’t Your Friend, Palooka” graphic I commissioned last fall.
  • Rocket, a Beanie Baby blue jay that I stole from IT Guy. (Because I occasionally throw it at people, I consider Rocket a tool, not a toy.)
  • a J. deBeer & Son brand softball that I stole from the office softball team’s equipment bag. I like the box because it doesn’t appear to have been redesigned since the company was founded in 1889 (“It has the Pep and stands Punishment”).
• I believe I would like to take a nap in my cubicle but I haven’t yet figured out how to do so without getting bothered or fired.
• I believe in updating my blog from my cubicle, on the occasions that I subdivide my lunch hour into a dozen or more “mini-breaks.”

Tonight I found this origami swan made from a $1 bill, perched on the uptown platform of the 1 train at the West 86th Street station

Since I was there last, Death & Co. has redesigned, reordered and expanded their cocktail menu. It makes more sense now to have drinks clustered by spirit—all the whiskey drinks in one section, all the gin drinks in another, and so on. I forced myself to not order a Double Fill Up (Rittenhouse rye whiskey, fresh lemon juice, pomegranate molasses and mint) even though I really wanted one.

So when they didn’t have the salt necessary to prepare a Cinder (jalapeño-infused tequila, mescal, fresh lime juice and a dash of angostura bitters, served in a glass rimmed with smoked salt), I instead asked for a Range Life. All I knew about it was that it contained tequila, for which I thirsted, and that “Range Life” is the name of a song I like by the band Pavement. I ordered it based on that. Which was a poor idea because not only could I taste no tequila, all I did taste was Campari, which as previously noted, I dislike.

Henceforth I will think twice about ordering drinks named after songs. I’ve got a narrowed eye on you, “Sentimental Journey.”

While my sister attends grad school at one of Ohio’s largest universities, she’ll be working there. She had to fill out a lot of paperwork and shared with me a form provided her by the Ohio Department of Public Safety, Division of Homeland Security.

The gist of this form is: are you a terrorist? If so, check the “Yes” box. If not, check “No.” There is no “Maybe” box but a handy three-and-a-half-page single-spaced addendum lists 133 organizations designated as terrorist by the U.S. Departments of State and Treasury.

Dana wonders if she wasn’t singled out with this form because she lived for a few years in Ireland, home to listed associations such as the Continuity Irish Republican Army, as well as the Real Irish Republican Army, which has better biscuits at its tea socials.

I have the same question as you: if one is a terrorist, why would one admit it to the state? But maybe the form is working. The ACLU noted today that there are now one million names on the nation’s watch list of individual terrorists, including “[m]embers of Congress, nuns, war heroes and other ‘suspicious characters.’”

I’m a year behind on my Will Smith-based summer blockbusters. So tonight I watched I Am Legend. I’m reading The World Without Us so it made sense to check out a cinematic view of a Manhattan populated only by Mr. Smith, his spunky German Shepherd, a few generic humans and hordes of computer-generated barefoot zombies.

According to what I’ve read in the Manhattan doomsday scenario presented early in Without Us, there likely wouldn’t be any rats around New York City after a few years without human life: the only reason they’re here now is for our garbage. (Incidentally, despite survive-a-nuclear-blast urban legends, cockroaches would die off without humans around to provide the warm habitats they need.)

I also think the roads of Manhattan wouldn’t be as smooth as they appear in the movie. One of the first things to fail in New York without electricity, according to Without Us, would be the pumps that keep the subways dry. The tunnels would fill quickly, the subways’ steel support columns would rust and collapse, and the streets above would gape and sink. In some cases, rivers would appear in their place.

The movie in five words: Cast Away set in Manhattan.

Astronomically, summer began last month but technically, it began tonight at the Clinton Hill backyard BBQ bash of Jill, Laura and Liz.

These girls totally need their own Sunday morning cartoon, in which they fly around the five boroughs, enacting drudgery-busting Super Party-Powers and Dance Magic on an unsuspecting public. Their relentlessly promoted merchandise would include T-shirts, puffy stickers, Lite-Brite templates, breakfast cereals, Colorforms and a very special After School Special, The Girl Who Drank Just Enough.

The party featured 60+ guests, grilled meats (fake and real) with a bevy of sides, fresh summer tracks on the jambox, a jumbo tub of iced beers, and Citronella candles and Tiki torches in the chair- and blanket-strewn backyard, which was accessible by a fire escape ladder I was convinced someone would fall from and crack their head but no one did.

Fashion note: although white leather plimsolls soil quickly with New York grime, they retain Dance Magic.

I was rereading High Fidelity this morning on the A train and made it to the part where the novel’s protagonist reorganizes his record collection “autobiographically.” Then I read this A.V. Club post on a similar meme.

So here are my favorite albums from every year since my birth. Surely there are omissions, misfires and regrets. But so what. Opinions are like assholes, in that I’m convinced mine smell better than yours.

I hope compilations and EPs count as albums because my list contains a few of each. I also noticed that the best albums by the Beatles, David Bowie, the Rolling Stones, Led Zeppelin and Stevie Wonder were released before my birth.

1973: Tom Waits, Closing Time

1974: Neil Young, On The Beach

1975: Bob Dylan, Blood On The Tracks

1976: The Modern Lovers, The Modern Lovers

1977: Elvis Costello, My Aim Is True

1978: Talking Heads, More Songs About Buildings And Food

1979: The Buzzcocks, Singles Going Steady

1980: The Pretenders, Pretenders

1981: The Pretenders, Pretenders II

1982: R.E.M., Chronic Town

1983: Tom Waits, Swordfishtrombones

1984: R.E.M., Reckoning

1985: The Cure, The Head on the Door

1986: R.E.M., Lifes Rich Pageant

1987: Def Leppard, Hysteria

1988: Pixies, Surfer Rosa

1989: Pixies, Doolittle

1990: Morrissey, Bona Drag

1991: U2, Achtung Baby

1992: Pavement, Slanted and Enchanted

1993: PJ Harvey, Rid of Me

1994: Portishead, Dummy

1995: PJ Harvey, To Bring You My Love

1996: Belle and Sebastian, If You’re Feeling Sinister

1997: Radiohead, OK Computer

1998: Madonna, Ray of Light ¹

1999: The Magnetic Fields, 69 Love Songs

2000: Death Cab For Cutie, The Forbidden Love EP

2001: Mogwai, Rock Action

2002: Wilco, Yankee Hotel Foxtrot

2003: Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Fever to Tell

2004: Joanna Newsom, The Milk-Eyed Mender

2005: Spoon, Gimme Fiction

2006: Cat Power, The Greatest

2007: Radiohead, In Rainbows

2008: Too soon?! So far I like Santogold, Santogold and Bon Iver, For Emma, Forever Ago

¹ Shut up. [back]

I wager that the collective IQ of the person’s responsible for this ad on Facebook is less than 160.

Can someone explain why Ed Hardy T-shirts are suddenly so popular? Everyone from A-Rod to every single other person in New York City is wearing one—right now—and they look as stupid as those neon Ocean Pacific T-shirts did in the ’80s.

The place? The 2008 Indy Spirits Expo at Astor Wines & Spirits. The deal? Near-limitless alcohol samples and cocktails for a flat fee of $15. The general trend? Organics. But it was mostly all good.

I drank the Dominican rum only because the distributor lunged at me with a bottle of it and I pitied him; few gathered for his pirate refreshment. But I sort of have a kinship with the D.R., livin’ in Inwood and all.

The rep for a cachaça showed me where the sugarcane for it was grown, shaping the bar towel on her tabletop into an approximation of Brazil and pointing to the vicinity of the Amazon. I nodded and humored her and thought I’d tell her I’d been to that towel before and that the monkeys she was referring to are called micos but I only wanted her for her caipirinha. And I got it, eventually.

The genial entrepreneur of the woodily delectable Hudson Manhattan Rye Whiskey noted offhand that he began merely by owning a mill. His business partner wanted to produce bread in it. But the former convinced the latter otherwise: why not whiskey? Same ingredients, different technique. Good call.

St. Germain, the print campaign for which impresses me, tasted decent until I learned what I’d drank was a lemony cocktail and the stuff straight is sweet and syrupy, which is why I hated the lemongrass liqueur from the exhibitor just to the left, although it sounded tempting on paper.

We drank a lot. Allison favored the cubes of peppery cheese from the “eat something before you get too drunk” nook overlooking East Fourth Street. Jovito managed somehow to ingratiate himself with Colin, a vodka supplier, and in the next moment was standing next to the guy, shaking cocktails before an appreciative crowd. We toasted Jovito’s mixology, drank it, then drank some more.

One of the two scruffy guys peddling vodka infused with huckleberries (“It’s the state fruit of Idaho”) wore a Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders From Mars T-shirt but admitted upon questioning that it was not necessarily his favorite Bowie album. “I’m more of a Bowie song guy than a Bowie album guy,” he said, nominating “Bring Me the Disco King.”

Guessing that the young lady at the pisco table wouldn’t have much to say about that brandy (“Pisco is a clear spirit distilled from grapes”), I asked her where one gets the best cocktails in the five boroughs. She warmed to the question, putting in top bids for PDT (which is accessed through a secret door in a phone booth in a hot-dog restaurant; no, really) and the bar at Le Lupanar, at Essex and Delancey. At one of them, she alleged, mentioning her name grants deluxe treatment. I forget which, but tell them Pisco Michelle sent you.

In the men’s room, as I completed a crucial step of the water cycle, a tipsy gent at the Mitsubishi Jet Towel admired the speed at which it dried his hands. With his digits hovering limply in space less than two feet from my urinal, he added, “This is the closest my hands have ever been to another guy’s dick.” And I believed him.

This is what I learned today: a friend who’s dating a Dominican woman told me that Dominicans in general go nuts over concón, the crust of rice that’s cemented to the bottom of the pot after cooking. This reminds me of the “crunchies” my Dad would scavenge from my Mom’s cooking, including the edge-burnt ingredients in baked dishes such as scalloped potatoes and ham; pie-crust runoff; and any post-frying scraps left in the bottom of a skillet.

I fancy certain French phrases more cleverly said in that language or for which there is no convenient English counterpart. Consider:

1. faire du lèche-vitrine. As Seth Sherwood writes in the New York Times (“Down Sybarites’ Alley,” December 23, 2007):

   Parisians don’t go window shopping. Rather, when the weekend arrives, the masses stroll past the boutiques and, as they put it, ‘faire du lèche-vitrine’ (go window licking).

2. jolie laide. Literally, “pretty-ugly.” From a long-ago Google-cached article I’ve lost the source for:

   The crumpled, melancholic Serge Gainsbourg even wrote a song about one such beauty: ‘Oh Jolie laide. Laide jolie. Souvent mignonne. Vilaine aussi ...tu es pile et tu es face...’ (‘Jolie laide, often cute, ugly too ...you are heads and tails.’) Gainsbourg and actress-singer Jane Birkin are the parents of French actress Charlotte Gainsbourg, who might be this generation’s poster child for jolie laide.

   And from my own email archives:

   I’d never thought of myself being a jolie laide kind of guy, but you know what? That’s exactly right. (e.g. Charlotte Gainsbourg.) The average American guy’s idea of feminine physical perfection alternately disgusts or bores me. Now, when in the company of men, speaking of things men do, I’ll be able to admit that I have ‘a type.’

   ‘Jolie laide,’ I’ll say.

   And they’ll take a swig of beer and say, ‘Yeah, I think Angelina Jolie’s pretty hot, too.’

3. l’esprit d’escalier. Literally, “stairway wit.” It’s when you think of a comeback too late, as previously covered here.

Better living through geometry: that’s inventor-visionary-crackpot Buckminster Fuller, in a geodesic nutshell. The man was bursting with ideas, most predicated on the idea that geometric symmetry is a form of perfection and, specifically, that the tetrahedron was “the most fundamental, structurally sound form found in nature.” The shape appears in most of his designs, including his best known, the geodesic sphere or dome, readily recognizable as Walt Disney World’s Spaceship Earth within Epcot Center; Wikipedia alleges the sphere’s shape and name were inspired, uncredited, by Fuller.

He believed in low-cost, easy-to-assemble structures that could be mass produced. Sensing kindred spirits in the folks at the Butler Manufacturing Co., mass-producer of grain bins (my grandfather had two such “Butler Buildings” on his farm in Delphos, Ohio), he partnered with the firm to develop squat silo-like housing for the military during World War II. The government approved Fuller’s design and the Army put a few hundred to use as operating rooms and houses, but steel rationing killed the project.

After the war, his thoughts turned to all that aluminum that was no longer needed for planes and developed Dymaxion Dwelling Machines, housing for the new suburban masses. On view at the Whitney Museum of American Art within a scale model of an idyllic cul-de-sac, the shiny aluminum spheroids are banded with florescent light. They resemble glowing alien hamburgers. Two people could assemble one in two days; only one was ever produced.

Most of Fuller’s projects unfolded this way: a passionate process of brainstorming and sketches, models and patents, resulting in little practicality. That didn’t stop him, though, and it didn’t stop the seeds of his ideas from sprouting later. I see a connection between Fuller’s Butler and Dwelling Machine plans and the suggestion today to use surplus steel shipping containers as affordable housing.

A black-and-white video of Fuller, standing stiff and blinking in a three-piece suit, shows him discussing the features of his large 4D House, which was suspended from the ground and shaped like a child’s toy top. On tape he doesn’t appear to be the wacky-inventor personality I thought he’d be, but professorial, monotonic and dry. Although that makes for unintentional entertainment when he rattles off selling points, such as how children, should they fall in a 4D House, would literally bounce back from the “pneumatic floors.” They could also, Fuller added, play baseball inside; the tetrahedral windows of the domed enclosure were constructed of certain materials connected so solidly that they could withstand tornadoes and an airplane crash. (Fuller doesn’t mention the impact playing baseball inside his domed home would have on the residents’ furniture, presumably not constructed with roughhouse-resistant geometry.)

Fuller wasn’t all spheres and symmetry: unsatisfied with the distortion in the Mercator projection world map, he developed the Dymaxion Air-Ocean World Map, which resembles an unfolded piece of complicated origami. And parked in the Whitney’s lobby is an energy-efficient, three-wheeled Dymaxion car, looking very like a whale and, as evidenced on video, moving very like an agitated fish.

The exhibit features little evidence on the popular reception of Fuller and his ideas (nor popular architectural trends concurrent with his timeline, which would have been useful for purposes of comparison) although I enjoyed the clever acrostic written by avant-garde composer John Cage for Fuller’s 85th birthday. How did those two men connect: Cage, master of chaos, and Fuller, master of order?

Spotted serendipitously on the subway afterwards, a quote from Galileo served as the sum of Fuller’s philosophy:

The book of nature is written in the language of mathematics. Its symbols are triangles, circles, and other geometric figures, without which it is impossible to understand a single word; without which there is only a vain wandering through a dark labyrinth.

I experienced the birth of my friends Joe and Andrea's first child this morning via Facebook, which was an unusual and thrilling experience. I page-refreshed often to keep up. Updates were offered as Andrea’s “Status Update” on her Facebook Profile page. For a while, I wondered how she could be at the hospital, birthing, yet find the time to report casually on her cervix. But it was soon revealed that her sisters had hacked into her account and were providing updates on her behalf.

From yesterday:

• Andrea is 4cm and on pitocin. 1:28pm
• Andrea is 5cm and holding, but comfortable with an epidural. 5:48pm
• Andrea is at 6cm but moving slowly (and sure to regret giving her sisters her FB password :) ). 7:42pm
• Andrea is at 6-7cm and getting some rest. 11:42pm

And then today:

• Andrea is at 8-9cm and hanging in there, unfortunately so is the baby!! 1:07am
• Andrea is at 10 and waiting to push! 3:23am
• Andrea is the proud mom of a beautiful baby boy!! GAVIN arrived at 6:33 this morning 8 lbs 14 oz and 22 inches long! Mom and baby are healthy and happy! 11:25am

The due-date was Independence Day but, as I pointed out to Joe when we spoke this morning, apparently his baby hates America because it arrived a day later. Congratulations, Joe and Andrea!

Apologies for the site downtime, true believers. To explain, three things happened at once: my personal IT Guy, Jimi, upgraded the servers on which this blog resides. He also upgraded my blogging software, Movable Type. (I must add that I approved both maneuvers figuring there would be some bugs on my end to iron out. Which proved to be an understatement.) And third, I managed to lose the Flash drive on which I’d stored the drafts of my entries from the past few weeks. So: as you can see, the site’s back up and working. Apparently. Let me know if you come across anything broken or obnoxious, other than this “new” default design, which you’ll just have to live with for now. And given my schedule, I may never get around to posting the back-dated entries from between mid-June and now. Such is life. I’m glad to have you back, at any rate.